Beauty and the beasts

Sleeping Beauty is rocketed into the realm of sci-fi for a crowd-pleasing show, and mayhem reigns in the bloody epic The Bull, says David Jays

Just when Ireland thought it could luxuriate in shiny economic success, along comesThe Bullto taunt the Celtic tiger with its boggy heritage. Fabulous Beast's production caused a storm on its Dublin premiere in 2005, and even if the physical-theatre company lacked outrage at London's Barbican, they smeared their mucky gusto all over an ancient Irish epic.

The Bull follows Michael Keegan-Dolan's Giselle as the second in a trilogy about a grotesque and feral Ireland. It is based on the An Tain Bo Cuailnge, a saga cherished as "the Irish Iliad". As with much epic, it's built on grudge, greed and a demented refusal to admit defeat. The original begins with a royal couple's bedtime squabble over who brought most wealth to the marriage, escalating to a bloody struggle over a splendid white bull. In this scabrous version, Olwen Fouere's hawkish silver matriarch, Maeve, squares up to Colm (Vladislav Benito Soltys),